Rebuilding with Worship: A Journey through Post-Disaster Faith

You know God is going to do.

What God is going to do, isn't he?

And I'm so grateful that it's been a year.

It's been a year and God has been faithful through every as the choir just led us so well in.

He's never failed us and he's not going to.

One thing that makes me so excited is I know it's just getting started, we're just getting started, and if we can't celebrate that, I don't know what we can celebrate right.

And I know you're happy.

I can't tell you are, but I know you're happy.

In the short year that Pinewood's been in existence, they've seen 58 new members come into the church.

They have had 18 to be baptized.

So I'm resisting the temptation to talk my entire time about Pinewood because we have other things talked about in God's Word.

But I'm extremely proud of the hundred people who this time last year were walking out of here saying goodbye to us and going to start something brand new.

I'm almost as proud of them as I am the hundred of you that will walk out one of these days to start site number three.

So just a word to the wise you may be one of those hundred people.

So let's pray.

Father, would you just continue to lead us, be out ahead of us so we can follow you as we follow Christ.

God, would you be our light and our guide and our strength and just continue to give us what we need.

We know You've never failed us.

We know that you will not.

We also know that you reward faith, and so, lord, where there is no vision, the people don't do well, they perish.

And so we ask you to continue, even in this moment, to show us some things from your Word that will give us the ability to either be restored, renewed or to be maybe recalibrated in the life, calling that You've given all of us.

For those of us in the room or watching online who are still in the process of coming to know you personally, lord, may today be that day.

So we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

So how are you doing?

You doing good, doing okay, up there in the balcony, good, glad to hear it, glad to hear it.

All right, you know, today we start a series, and I'll tell you about that in just a second.

We all are probably very well informed of the disaster that happened in Maui a few weeks ago, the worst disaster probably to hit that island ever.

Initial reports were a thousand people missing.

We know over a hundred confirmed dead.

There's been this little side story that has gone on at the marina where thepretty much the center of the fire hit.

There's a huge banyan tree that is there in that marina.

You may have seen it, and I heard one report where a guy was on the dock.

He had gotten everybody off that he possibly could.

He said when I saw the fire come over the crest of the ridge and just torch that big tree, I knew it was time for us to leave.

And we did.

That banyan tree was 150 years old, it was 60 feet tall and it had 46 trunks that had grown out of it.

It was the landmark and the symbol for that island in many, many ways.

Two weeks ago a team of arborist horticulturalists did a bunch of studies and they drilled down to the roots.

And guess what?

The roots are still living and although the above ground temperature was a thousand degrees, they said we have great hope that this tree will live again, it will be restored.

And I thought, wow, what a great symbol for what we're going to talk about today witha story you all are familiar with Noah and the Ark, right?

So turn to chapter 8 of Genesis Chapterwe'll start there.

Probably.

You know we've all had these crises in our life, or disasters, we would call them, or just real tough challenges.

Some of you may be in those right now and the thought is always what will I do on the other side of this?

How will I rebuild, how will I pick up the pieces that have been lost or the relationships that are no longer there and move on with a new reality?

That's what they're doing in Maui.

That's what many of you are doing at the present time or have.

That's what we'll figure in with Noah here.

So the series called Mountain Men we're going about for probably the next five weeks at least, or so, we're going to look at these places.

In the Old Testament that were high places where men are called to go to the mountain to meet with God.

For some special reason.

Some are there looking for wisdom, some are there looking for a victory over enemies.

Some have really no idea where they're going.

One in particular is there, and he would rather be anywhere else than on that mountain, because what he has been asked to do is going to be the hardest thing that he's ever done in his life, and his name was Abraham.

They're all flawed men, but they all had this special relationship with God.

This is the only indication where they land there in a boat.

They didn't have to climb the mountain.

And so I'm not going to focus on the whole big process of this, other than to set the context of you.

But, with Noah and the Ark, I'm going to focus on what happened right after the flood, because I think that's instructive to us.

In the middle of really tough times, sometimes God will put a mountain in front of you just so you'll have a landing spot to be restored.

We all have those occasions in our lives where we need to be restored, and in the spiritual sense it was physical in their days, but you'll see the spiritual undertones of it also.

That's where we are many, many times, and God may be leading you uphill right now toward a place that he is going to move in your life, and he will restore much of what's been broken.

And so, that being the case, how about turn to Genesis, chapter 8?

Genesis 8 · chapter mention

We'll kind of I'll set the tone for you in the context.

As you know, god in chapter 6 says people are just too evil.

I just got to start over, basically, and we're introduced to Noah.

It says Noah was a righteous and a good man and he was blameless.

He was not sinless, but he was blameless.

And so with that we're introduced to him.

And then the rains come.

You know the story gather all the animals up, the flood hits, it rains hard and floods come up out of the ground for 40 days.

And in chapter 8, verse 4, it says on the 17th day of the seven month in the ark, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Errorat.

So let's show that.

Next slide there.

Pamela, this is in present day Turkey.

This is a part of a mountain range.

Actually there's two tall peaks that archaeologists believe.

One of those is probably the site Mount Errorat.

One is 14,000 feet high, the other one is 17,000.

This is the taller of the two.

So this is not just a little hill, this is a seriously tall mountain they came to rest on here.

Chapter 7, I think it's around verse 23.

We hear the.

We read the part where it says and once they got in and the rains came and they're all batting down and it's just this family, it says they were all alone there in the ark.

That's one of the loneliest verses I think I can find in the Old Testament.

They were all alone there in the ark 40 days and 40 nights, we believe through some researchers, and if you added up in the Bible it was almost exactly 365 days.

They were in that ark Exactly a solar year, and it looks like he may have been speaking and it wasn't recorded, but it looks like from the time the door closed until God speaks, come out of the ark.

There's silence and they're just living there by faith.

It's an amazing occurrence.

Let me read to you chapter 8, verses 15 through 18.

Then God said to Noah come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives, bring out every kind of living creatures that is with you, the birds, the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground so that they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in numbers upon it.

So they have this.

You know, here's your job from here on, verse 18.

So Noah came out together with his sons, he and his wife and his sons' wives.

So I want to talk just for a minute about restoration features.

That's what applies to all of us, I think.

So what are some features we can learn from the Scripture immediately after they come out of the ark.

It's like one of those.

What next things?

What do I do next?

What do I say next?

Well, first thing, if you look at chapter 8, let's skip down to verse 20 and 21,.

Worship moves God's heart.

What does he do?

The first thing out of being cooped up in that ark for a solid year verse 20, then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds he sacrificed, burnt offerings on it.

The very first thing he does after a year in that ark, the first recorded altar that we have, which the altar was the symbol of worship I'm going to pay homage to God.

I'm looking to God now, for my next move is basically what he's saying.

And he, as in the custom of the Old Testament, he offers a sacrifice.

Where does he get the animal for the sacrifice?

Well, obviously it's got to come out of the ark, right?

I wonder if we have a species that was extinct after that, that we never know about now, because, oh, there, wouldn't that be a bummer to be that animal?

And you've survived a year, cooped up on that smelly, stinking ark, and you see daylight for the first time, and it's all over, but he grabs.

I guess maybe they were multiplying on the ark so we won't worry about losing that species there.

But here's the reminder again.

The Red Cross is not coming, Samaritan's purse will not be arriving, Even the South Carolina Baptist Convention disaster relief team, they're not going to be coming.

There is no one.

Can you imagine how quiet it was, how desolate.

There may be a little bit of vegetation around?

We know that.

You know, an olive branch was brought back by the dove the second time.

But largely it's just a bald sphere of this old globe and there is no one there except this one family and a few animals.

And so verse 21, the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma.

And then does God's smell think this is kind of putting a human attribute to a sovereign spirit, god to give us, you know, the ability to embrace Him?

Or this just basically means he acknowledged it, he acknowledged the pleasing aroma and he said in His heart never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of His heart is evil from childhood, and never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.

This is one of the strong indications in the Old Testament of grace.

I've heard a lot of critics say why would God, why would a loving God wipe out almost the entire human race and the animal kingdom?

You know, if he's so loving, why?

Really, it's the opposite, it's true.

This is, if anything, was a super evidence of the grace of God.

He has gone evil, everyone has gone bad, and he decides I'm going to start over again with one righteous family, because what he knows they didn't know.

And that is somewhere the bloodline has to be preserved, because I'm going to send my son into the picture and I'm going to give him the opportunity to restore everybody who wants to be restored.

And so he knew what was coming there.

It's an amazing thing that he did so.

What's this business about?

Does God actuallyis he actually moved by our worship at times?

Well, we know he feels what we feel.

We know, for instance, in Genesis 6, 5 and 6, it says he was grieved in His heart for even creating the human race because of our sinfulness.

So we know he can be moved.

There's other places where it says that His heart was Worship is aimed at being a bridge between us and a holy righteous God.

Noah walks out of there, down that ramp and out into the new world and he knows that he has just had an encounter for over a hundred years in the construction and everything, of a righteous, holy other God who is not anything like Him.

And at this point I would think God is a terrifying being.

If he can do this, he can snuff us all out in the next heartbeat.

How do I bridge to this God who's created me and has this type of destructive power?

He just bows and he starts to worship.

We know God's heart is moved.

We know in Nehemiah, when God ordains worship, it moves.

His heart is moved.

But we also know that the hearts of the people are moved In Nehemiah, chapter 8, they've been away from God for a long time.

Nehemiah 8 · chapter mention

The temple's being restored.

They're going back into Jerusalem.

After exile, they decided to get Ezra to read the scrolls that have been found in the back of the church.

Nobody in that generation has ever heard the Bible read before.

As he starts to read the Bible, everybody just reflexively starts to stand up and they begin to weep because they realize what he's reading is not us, we're not who that is portraying us to be, and the leaders even start to try to calm them down.

Hey, this must be a big celebration.

This is like a church opening.

This is a launch of our church and all.

And they just continue to repent and to weep.

But here's the thing right after that, great joy followed, and then he puts the two together.

He says here's the bridge.

You are experiencing now the joy of the Lord, and that is your strength.

You know that verse, chapter 8, verse 10, the joy of the Lord is your strength and that's what our reminder is.

When we worship and we're really genuinely bowing before God and expressing, like you've been doing today, how great he is, he gives us a certain amount of joy.

That is a bridge and it does.

It moves his heart.

And there's a permanent aspect to worship.

Look at verse 22, chapter 8, verse 22,.

As long as the earth endures, sea time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.

So God says never again.

He says this three times in this chapter.

Never again will I do that.

Does that mean never again will he judge the earth?

Oh no, it means never again will I wipe it out by flood that way.

But then he says this is a permanent relationship that we have.

So can I encourage you a little bit.

When you don't know what next to do, when you don't know how to pick up the pieces, when you don't have answers to the late, the disaster that may be coming into your life, the thing left to do is always worship.

You worship the Lord.

David was a great master craftsman at that.

When I'm broken, when I don't know what to do, I'm just gonna go worship.

Because the effect of that is it moves God's heart and inclines him toward us, even though we're broken.

And because he knows what is coming next and he knows what we need next, he many times will respond through your worship activity and he'll start to set you on a new direction and he will start to restore your heart.

And that's the.

That's one of the great encouragement.

I'll have to say this I would imagine as Noah built that altar and he and his family kneel around that altar and they sacrificed whatever their posture was.

I bet they, I bet God had never had their attention like he did that day.

Don't you think?

Whoo, they are zeroed in on him because they're ultra-dependent on him.

So in chapter 9 now if you want to just scan chapter 9, verses 1 through 7, god starts to tell them you know their purpose and do this, and that he's basically saying this is my landing spot to restore you, but also the whole human race, through this Verse 3,.

Just for as a curiosity thing, check out chapter 9, verse 3.

God says everything that lives and moves will be food for you.

Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.

When he created Garden of Eden, he says all these plants are for you to eat.

Now that he's starting over again, he says all these things that live and move.

So hey, we can.

It's okay to be carnivores.

If you know a vegan that gives you a hard time, just show him chapter 9, verse 3.

It's not a sinful thing to eat a little meat occasionally.

Amen, bert.

It's not a sin to eat some red meat occasionally.

And so then he goes on and completes the loop.

But then here's the second vital thing for me and you.

I think he announces a covenant.

The covenant belongs to God and it benefits us.

Alright, let's look at the covenant.

Look at verse 8 through 10, chapter 9.

Then God said to Noah and his sons with him, I now establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals and all those that came out of the ark with you as living creatures on earth.

Yes, he's established a covenant with living creatures, not as the one with us, but he's just saying as they are in, as you are stewards of the environment and the animal kingdom, that is part of my covenant with you, so manage it well, is what he's saying there.

But this covenant, strictly, was belonging to God and in the Old Testament it was a superior to an inferior.

We've talked about that before.

The superior is basically saying I know you've got really nothing to offer me.

This is not going to benefit me a bit, so it's me pouring into you.

I also know you're not going to be faithful, but I'm going to do it anyway and I will never not be faithful to this covenant.

It's amazing thing the author and the finisher of it is God and all the benefit comes to us, not to God.

One theologian by the name of Icarot said that in those ancient days.

The amazing thing is no one ever questioned the authority of a covenant with God.

If you were a God-fearing, believing follower of Jehovah God, you never questioned the authority of this covenant that was spelled out even starting in Noah and then enhanced through Abraham.

This is an expansive thing, y'all.

It's not just a rigid set of laws.

They had those and Noah is going to live by a set of commandments.

If you obey, it goes well.

If you don't obey, I'm going to have to judge that.

We know that.

But why do you say it's expansive and not super rigid?

Because the Word of God is living and breathing.

Right, if the Word of God is living, then His laws have this expansive quality.

The truth is the truth.

It's not going to change.

But within that, god had to make allowances for the fact that we on the other side of the covenant are not going to get it right every single day, and because we're going to fail it, he had to make provisions.

This was the first one.

He always dealt with sin, and we'll talk about that in just a second.

There's always the judgment part of it and the consequences part of it.

But the expansiveness of God was I'm going to still hang in there with them and correct them.

Every time they get, I will restore them, and we see that all through Israel, and then the ultimate restoration is going to be in the first century.

I'll send my son and he will come to, as he said, fulfill the law to make it even the best it's ever been.

So that's why the gospel is so important.

That's why we talk about it every single week, the center of the gospel, not just the margins.

If we nibble around at the margins, you know what we'll fall into.

We'll fall into just a commentary every single week about how evil and bad the world is and everybody outside is going to hell and a lot of that is true and this sin is wrong and this is wrong, and we'll state the obvious in here and we'll all go home.

If the gospel is really the gospel, the gospel changes hearts and therefore we don't have to name all the crimes that are being committed by ourselves and other people, you following me.

It's important sometimes to distinguish that if people don't know.

But that's not.

Our job is to be a commentator on good and bad and evil.

Of course we know where we stand and of course we're standing on the truth, but the gospel is aimed at dealing with all of that.

That's what Jesus taught continually when he taught the kingdom.

In dealing with that, hearts and lives changed all around Him and we believe that that's still our job today too.

So look back at this.

Number two belongs to God, but it benefits us.

Do you ever reverse those?

Come on, be honest, do you ever like?

Well, it's the covenant with me and God.

So God owes me.

God owes me a good living.

I'm a good person, I go to church, so I shouldn't have the problems that other people have.

That's when we own a covenant that's not ours, or when we want only the benefits but we fall apart when the adversity strikes.

That's not the way it works either, is it?

Because the rain falls on the just and the unjust?

So there's a third thing in that you know, your mountain may be a place for restoration.

Mercy always follows judgment.

Look at verse 15 and 16 of chapter 9, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind.

Never again there will go again.

Never again will the waters come to flood and to destroy all of life.

Verse 16, whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and I will remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.

It always, instantly judges every sin, but then there's mercy that follows it, and that's what he's doing with Noah and his family, and as a visual symbol of the covenant, he sends the rainbow.

Can you put that up there, pamela?

And y'all know that story.

The rainbow is the symbol of the fact that God said never again will I destroy the world by such a thing.

Now, I'm certainly not expert on all of this, but I read where the various colors on the rainbows are light waves going through moisture in the air and that light actually bends to create that effect, and the different colors or different wavelengths of all of that.

I also read where, you know, it's an optical illusion to us, because it looks like it comes down somewhere and all of that.

It looks like you can trace it, but actually it is more of a complete circle because it's out there.

So I guess we could say the only person who ever sees the complete circle of a rainbow is you know who.

God right, and what a sight that must be.

But God, in His beauty, has created something beautiful as our reminder.

Now let's go back to mercy, though, which that's a symbol of Matthew 5,7,.

It says blessed are those who are merciful, why they will be shown mercy.

Oh, that's hard to do, isn't it when somebody is obviously gotten out of bounds and it hurts you, it bothers, it affects maybe your family.

To be merciful and to receive mercy is a tough task.

Well, the one who's?

That's a quote of Jesus Himself, who then went to the cross to prove how to be merciful.

And some of you are thinking that's probably easy for God to say be merciful because he's God, he's capable of being merciful, he was here, he will be with me, he has been with me.

God's always merciful.

That must be easy for God.

It probably wasn't too easy to sacrifice His Son for our sins and our transgressions.

So who in the room today, or who out there watching might need a second chance?

Who's in that place where I've lost my connection?

I've lost my bridge?

I know that I've gotten in the wrong place and I just need to be restored today?

Who in your world needs a safe place to be restored?

And God's telling you today you got to be that person.

I know you don't want to.

I know there's risk involved.

Well, I've already given her a fortI know that.

But where is there a person around you that needs to be shown mercy so that God will redeem and restore that person?

Some of the characters we're going to look at in the following week, sure needed it.

Abraham goes to the mountain to do some stuff, god, and he's known as a man of faith, an ultra man of faith.

But boy, he had his issues.

He lied about his wife.

He got ahead of God with the having a son through someone.

You know that story.

David is going to be one of those that ascends to the mountain A few years after that famous event where he conquered by the cause of God's hand being on him and he blessed him deeply.

David has a man set up to die in battle, who was one of his thirty mighty men who would lay down his life for David at the drop of the hat, and David has him killed just because of simple lust over his wife.

Elijah will be one of those characters.

The very next chapter, after the highlight of his life, mount Carmel, he's running like a scared dog and he's lost his faith, only to be restored again by God.

Now tell you a quick story of how powerful this event is.

In 1944, a German ace by the name of Franz Stegler was flying a mission.

He was defending his homeland.

He was flying over the airspace of Germany.

They had been a bombing raid by the Allies and they were fighting over dogfights.

He was already an ace.

He had already killed enough people of the enemy to be a German ace.

He was one more kill away from having the highesttheir version of the iron cross, the highest honor you could have.

And as Stegler saw in his sights, up ahead there was a B-17, an American B-17 that two of the engines had already been disabled.

A third one was leaking fuel badly.

Half of the guns had already been knocked out of it.

There was a big hole in the fuselage which meant it was 50 degrees below zero in there.

Because the altitude they were flying, what he didn't know.

He could see some people moving around and he could tell they were injured.

He didn't know that two had already been killed.

This was a badly disabled.

How it was still in the air is a miracle to this day.

So he does what a German ace does he hones in on it.

It's just going to take three or four shots and bang.

He's going to bring it down.

He'll go in and be celebrated one more time.

For some reason he does not do it.

For some reason he pulls alongside this wounded B-17 until the pilot sees him and he motions him forward and he flies side by side for several miles of this B-17 until they got out of German airspace.

And when they got to a neutral country, he starts doing this like set it down the pilot Brown.

Lieutenant Brown of the Allied Forces crossed the Bering Straits and land safely in England, and the rest of his crew were all saved.

Forty-five years later, lieutenant Charles Brown finally caught up with Lieutenant Franz Siegler in Germany.

He had moved to Canada by then.

Forty-five years later, they made a connection and had a face-to-face meeting, and we still don't know exactly what motivated this German ace.

Later then he said when I saw how badly crippled this vessel was, he said it would been to me like shooting an unarmed man in the back.

So I decided to show them mercy, and he did.

Brown went on to be a scientist and developed a diesel engine that was the most efficient environmental thing of its time.

They became fast friends until 2009,.

They both died the same year, just a couple of months apart, in 2009.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy right.

Well, I read in Revelation 4-3 that for those who are Christ followers, guess what the day is coming, even not in this world, but in the next world we will see another rainbow.

You don't believe me?

Revelation 4, verse 3,.

Revelation 4:3

A rainbow that had the appearance of emerald surrounded the throne.

Rainbow that looked like emerald surrounds the throne.

Guess who's going to be sitting on the throne?

Jesus?

Guess what the color of emerald represents in the Bible resurrection power.

That'll be a beautiful rainbow, won't it?

But it won't be half as beautiful as the one sitting on the throne.

Who's made all this possible?

We'd love to have you come down and make a decision to be restored by Christ as Eddie comes forward, or toif, you need to join the church family.

If you need to take any of those steps, or just need prayer for somebody in your world that is looking to have a landing spot to be restored, this is a great time to do it.

Why don't you stand, and we'll be down front.

Let me pray for you, lord.

We all stand in the need of your redemptive powers.

We all stand in the need of your grace and your mercy, and we are grateful for that provision that you have made through Jesus.

So, god, would you just continue to move our hearts as we worship you in Jesus' name.